Spring May Actually Have Sprung = Laid Back Ponies

So Yes!! Here it is.....I give you Spring ( I think).  At last the cold May has turned into sunny May.  The grass is positively springing!!  Time to move the ponies onto The Hill Field (always the Spring Grazing). Not as simple as it sounds!  We have Daisy, who has Ems (which means she is prone to Laminitis), Dora (a fat Welsh Sec A), Mini (A Shetland! Say no more), and Lil, who has no grass problems, but cannot be turned out with Charlie as they are in lurve! So these four have to stay together, which means the pre-grass munchers are Lu and Charlie. They have no problems with eating nice spring grass, but WILL get fat!!

So over the last week we moved the Munchers first, to eat off the best grass. These have been followed by the other four.  So its back to strip grazing for all! This is the best course to follow with Cobs.  They Will Eat Everything In Sight. So as well as moving back the fences every day, we also have to make sure they are all working. 

To this end we have been making full use of the round pen, running Daisy round daily.  Dora has gone on a Sleepover, which is turning into a working holiday, which she SO needs. Lu, Charlie and Lil have been worked regularly. Mini the Shetland is surprisingly self-regulating with the grass gorge, so gets away with just working at the weekends.

But the upside of this??  Fat happy laid back ponies!! Because they are not hungry they are happy!  This makes working them easier because they are so chilled. Last week I took Charlie out in hand with Jo and Lu. Chilled as! On the way back, I got on him and rode him up the drive. Still chilled.  On Saturday Grace rode Lily in the school...Yup you guessed it...Chilled!  This week I have worked with Charlie on his Tricks....Well chilled!  

In contrast last weekend we all went to a horse car boot sale at an Equine Centre. I will name no names, but this yard should have fat happy laid back cobs. To do their jobs properly they need to be chilled and happy. Granted they are fat... but not in a good way.  They are all stabled 24/7 so are not exercising. So they lose muscle. And they are stiff. And living a life that's far removed from their natural lives. As they are not exercising or living in herds, or shivering a bit in the cold, they have become fat.  So they are all on diets!!!! Which makes them grumpy!  Its not hard to keep a horse happy...... All they need is to live as naturally as possible, in a herd, naked, and living off forage. And it makes a lot less work!!  I personally did not go look at these horses in their prisons, as I have already made my views clear.....but one of our friends did...and she came away in tears!

Please Horse Owners.... Let your Horses Live Naturally.....They will become the easiest, most laid back horses! 

Charlie Learning To Be a Trick Pony

Natural Herd Living

I know I bang on about the benefits of keeping horses as naturally as possible....but here I go again. Today I have read 2 articles on Faceache, which are both scientific and common sense. Neither article was related....but actually they are.  They both reinforced my belief in keeping horses in a natural state as possible.

The 1st post was about rugging.  Now if you compete all winter as I have done in the past, you need to clip your horse to prevent it getting too hot. If you clip, you need to rug.  Thats fine. But however, if you are just a happy hacker, as i am now, its fine to leave the horse naked.  After all they are naked in the wild. 
The post went into all sorts of scientific biochemistry, of which I have no hope of explaining here.  But basically......The horse is an animal. They are designed to live outdoors. We tend to humanise animals. But bear in mind....We have thin skin that feels the cold. Horses have thick skin.  Horses also have FUR.  The fur has muscles, which can stand up and change direction, which increases the thickness.  Horses are designed to withstand all kinds of weather.  They survived the Ice-Age.  In Winter in the Wild, they do not seek shelter, they do not hibernate, or live in caves.  The fur gets greasy, which makes them waterproof.  Rain runs off the fur, leaving the undercoat dry. Horses have a very efficient internal heating system, generated by eating.  SO if you are a happy hacker in the Winter, your horse does not need a rug, or hard feed.....Just plentiful forage (hay).  And please dont groom him, as you will remove the grease.  A quick removal of mud around the areas that tack will go on, is enough.

The 2nd Post was about sleep! Not something I have ever thought about before. Humans sleep in one block.  We all know horses sleep in short phases and can sleep standing up....due to being prey animals, and the need to leg it at short notice.
What I didn't know, or think about before was the type of sleep horses need. Like us, they have different stages of sleep.  The sleep they have, while standing up, or lying on there chests, is light sleep.  Like humans, to have a really refreshing sleep, they need to go into REM, where humans dream. This is a deep sleep, muscles are paralysed, and the brain processes its day.  No doubt the horse also dreams....We have all seen dreaming dogs?

For a horse to do this, it has to lay flat out, all the muscles relaxed and paralysed. This is a big deal for a horse!!! It has to feel completely at ease and safe. No mean feat for an animal that may get eaten any minute!  It has to trust its herd mates to watch for danger!  So what happens when a horse is stabled??  First up it has no herd to watch for predators. Secondly, the stable may be too small for it to lay flat out. So the horse that is in its lovely warm stable sleeping all night, is probably too wary to actually sleep properly....Something to think on.

As you all know by now, our ponies live out 24/7 in 2 herds.  We do have guest ponies, but the main bulk of the Herd is settled.  Charlie is the Stallion (so he thinks).  Lu is the Dominant Mare, and the rest are mares. The only reason there is a line of electric fencing between the smaller and bigger ponies is that Charlie was cut late, and stills behaves like a Stallion. They can still touch, interact and hang out together, and therefore feel safe enough to lie flat out.

We have often caught the whole herd, flat out asleep. A herd will normally leave one horse on guard (like a Meercat), but a relaxed safe herd like ours just dont bother!!  This is a natural way of living, making a happier horse, and a less stressed owner.

Why make life difficult?? Our daily routine is laid back.  The horses are already out, so dont stress if we are 5 minutes late to turn out. We dont have to muck out stables (saving on time, and money on bedding).  We dont have to change rugs (more time and money saved). No grooming (more time saved....we only groom lightly when riding). No hard feed.... Who wants to spend all that money on mixes?  In the Winter we spend our money on hay.  Each day we deliver more than enough hay to the fields.  They always have some left over.  Hay equals roughage, equals generating warmth. If a particular horse is on rehab, we may feed it, but with chopped oat straw, mixed with whatever herbs it might need. And so we check and refill the waters, poo pick the fields every day, which saves on worming.....And thats it. 

Keeping horses naturally is cheap, its quick, and the horses are happy because they are living as close as possible to how they are supposed to live.  The 3 F's. Freedom, Friends, and Forage.  Lecture over...Think on it.

Clicker Training And The Importance of Poo.

Yes thats right....The importance of poo. As you all may have gathered I am a great believer in horses being kept as naturally as possible. 'Tucking the horse up in bed' goes against all its natural instincts. Horses only sleep in 15 minutes burst, for four hours a day. So in a stable they do not sleep peacefully all night, but get bored. They cannot satisfy the natural urge to wander about. As herd animals they rely on other members to alert them to passing lions. Its no good telling them their are no scary lions.....Unless there actually are where you live. So in a stable, alone, they are probably on full alert all night. Anyway I digress.

So, our horses live out 24/7.  That being the case all the poo is in their fields, not churned up amongst straw. This gives us two major benefits.  One, we get to hang out in the field with the herd for longer each day, which increases our bond with them, and allows us to observe their natural behaviour.  At a glance we can tell if all's well. Two, we are intimate with their pooing habits. Poo is a great indicator of health. We can see if its a bit loose, a bit hard, sandy, wormy etc. We also know exactly how many poos there should be.....Yes I have counted them many times!!! This gives us an advantage in managing their diets. We are on sandy soil, so at the first indication of sand in the poo, we feed bran mashes with pysillium in.

In so many bigger yards, the actual yard managers rarely get their hands dirty, so can't possibly know whats going on with the horses health. When I ran a bigger yard, I always did the poo picking myself for this very reason, and am proud that in 10 years I had no laminitus and only one colic (and that was a new pony that I wormed as you do, without knowing she had never been wormed and the vast amount of worms that died caused a blockage).

And so to the weather report!!  Its finally turned milder....although we are still expecting a cold Easter. Anyway we have been taking advantage and have started to work the ponies. All except the Shetlands have been out on various walk-outs, either ridden or in-hand.  My former partner-in-crime, Tess came and rode Daisy, who was like a cat on hot bricks....full of the joys of spring, including showing how well she could rear!! The only drawback with milder days is going back in the evenings to put rugs back on. Although the sunsets are lovely and its nice to have a goodnight kiss from Charlie.

Charlie has also resumed clicker training.  He may be a surfer dude with his laid back attitude, but he doesn't forget a thing.  Especially when carrots are involved.  We are practising him standing glued to the 'target', while I move around him, and he has been an absolute star.